YouTube Red

So, do you subscribe?

Yesterday, YouTube Red launched its first slate of original programming.

In case you don’t know, YouTube Red is an ad-free, subscription-based streaming service designed to boost revenue while becoming less reliant on advertising.

Subscribers pay about $10 a month to watch videos without ads, and YouTube Red also offers original video content you can’t see anywhere else.

The ad-free channel has been operating for about three months (though the original programming only debuted yesterday) and YouTube hasn’t disclosed any subscriber numbers yet.

One YouTube exec complained that “Red is only providing a few bucks to a few hundred bucks per channel per month.

Another unnamed YouTube source said “the channel received only 7 cents per minute watched by Red subscribers versus 33 cents per minute on the ad-supported side.

Meanwhile, Instagram has debuted a new drama series, delivered in 15-second bites, called Shield 5. It’s supposed to lead to a full length feature film eventually.

Both YouTube and Instagram are designed to be viewed on your phone, on a small screen, but the jury is still out on whether Millenials will pay a monthly fee to access this sort of original content.

Based on Apple’s recent designs, phone screens are trending bigger as attention spans are trending smaller.

So the real issue is, will you pay $10 a month for this kind of content, knowing you could get HBO and all of its original content — including Game of Thrones, VICE, Girls, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Real Time with Bill Maher, and more — for the same cost?

Guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Feels like every other media outlet is investing in original, proprietary content — except Radio.